RIP: Craigie Aitchison, painter who refused to be tied down to a school or genre, 83
La N
Craigie Aitchison: Painter renowned for his use of colour
who refused to be tied down to a school or genre
By Charles Darwent
Wednesday, 23 December 2009
For 50 years, the painter Craigie Aitchison drew on the same
small repertoire of images: crucifixions, Italian
landscapes, portraits of black men and pictures of dogs,
usually Bedlington Terriers.
Not surprisingly, he had few imitators. All the same,
Aitchison, who has died of cancer at the age of 83, was an
immensely successful artist, with a devoted following among
the great and good. Resistant to being tied down to a school
or genre, he particularly disliked being described as na�ve.
But there was, in both his art and life, a childlike quality
that won the hearts of those who knew him.
This was curious, as there was little in Aitchison's
childhood to suggest a future as either an artist or an
ing�nu. He was born into Edinburgh's New Town aristocracy,
his background firmly legal. His father, Craigie Mason
Aitchison KC - the painter, christened John, later took his
name - was Lord Advocate for Scotland and Labour MP for
Kilmarnock. Educated at Loretto, the young Craigie-to-be was
also groomed for the law. In 1948, he began eating his
dinners at the Middle Temple, although he gave these up
after two years in favour of a fine art course at the Slade.
There he met his lifelong friend, the painter Euan Uglow, a
favourite of the school's director, Sir William Coldstream.
Aitchison himself was viewed less warmly. "I was told by two
visiting tutors, Victor Pasmore and John Piper, just to give
it up," he cheerfully recalled, with characteristic lack of
bile. When he copied a crucifixion by the still-living
French Fauvist, Georges Rouault, a dismissive Slade
professor sniffed, "This is far too serious a subject for
you." Stung, Aitchison decided to persist with crucifixions,
which he did for the next half-century.
This was all the more unexpected as he was not, in any
conventional sense, a religious man. His explanations for
his fixation were typically vague. "After my father dropped
dead when I was 12, I read nothing but criminal cases," he
said. "I didn't have time for made-up stories, because I was
reading about murders... I mean, the things people do,
honestly!"
Actually, Aitchison was 15 when his father died, but a taste
for drink scumbled his background, like those of his
paintings. His belief in Christ as an eternal victim was
consistent, however, chiming with his own sense of exclusion
from life's mainstream.
This may also explain Aitchison's taste for painting
portraits of black men, which he excused in simple formal
terms. Although he disliked being described as a colourist
("Everyone uses colour, don't they?" he once remarked), his
pictures were almost always built up of thin, deeply
saturated Expressionistic hues against which, he said, black
skin looked better than white. His subjects included a
nonagenarian boxer who had fought as the Chicago Kid, one
Georgeous Macaulay and Aitchison's regular house-sitter in
south London, Alton Peters.
A portrait of the last, bought by the Government Art
Collection, hung over the desk of Chris Smith MP during his
tenure as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.
Unlike Smith and his fellow-painter of pugilists and
crucifixions, Francis Bacon, Aitchison chose to keep his
sexuality to himself.
This privacy, too, made his success surprising. In a time
when celebrity became confused in the British mind with
talent, Aitchison shunned the limelight. Not quite a
colourist nor yet a na�ve painter nor a Pop artist, his
pictures seemed to come from nowhere. His analysis of his
own work echoed the unnerving simplicity of the work itself.
Questioned about the armlessness of Christ in his
Crucifixion 9 (1987, now in the Tate), Aitchison remarked,
"Everybody knows who He is. He doesn't need arms." As to the
watching dog - a Bedlington, naturally - its role was to
look as though "it was in a state about the situation".
These answers, like the works themselves, added to the
feeling that a Jungian drama was being played out on
Aitchison's canvases; a story of infantile suffering in
which words were replaced by archetypes and colours.
It was, perhaps, this sense of quiet tragedy that explained
the longevity of his success. Aitchison showed his first
crucifixion in a one-man show at the Beaux Arts Gallery in
1959; he was still painting them when he died. And yet his
fans never tired of them. The ex-critic of The Times
recalled the artist turning to him at a Royal Academy dinner
and yelping, "You're the one who said I was desperately in
need of a new subject." Then, before the spluttering writer
could reply, Aitchison continued, "And you're right, you
know, you're right!" Yet he triumphed by becoming more and
more like himself without slipping into self-parody.
Among his most recognisable traits was the use of saturated
colours. Although these were already in his repertoire as a
student - he had, he said, been "bowled over" as a child by
a reproduction of Gauguin in his father's study - they were
fed by his later love of Italy and the Italian Primitives,
particularly Piero della Francesca. In 1955, Aitchison had
used the money from a British Council scholarship to buy a
London taxi and drive to Rome. It was the beginning of a
lifelong affair with Italy, culminating in his buying of the
farmhouse near Montecastelli in Tuscany where he passed long
periods of his later life. After time spent there, his
cadmium yellows would always be yellower, his royal blues
more royal.
Earlier, in the 1960s and '70s, he had painted while on
drugs - "You know," he helpfully explained to a startled
interviewer, "LSD and all that, and amphetamines." These
shaped Aitchison's palette until his need for them got out
of hand, and he gave them up. For the last 30 years of his
life, his main influences were whisky and Italy. Small,
stooped and with a shock of white hair, he was, like his
paintings, amiable and modest; although, like them, there
was an underlying melancholy to him that hinted at something
less happy.
John Ronald "Craigie" Aitchison, painter; born Edinburgh 13
January 1926; RA 1988, CBE 1999; died 21 December 2009.
La N
"The Other Guy" <knews...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:7nh3j5pi2ih668k5s...@4ax.com...
> On Wed, 23 Dec 2009 07:00:50 GMT, "La N" <nilita20...@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>Craigie Aitchison: Painter renowned for his use of colour
>>who refused to be tied down to a school or genre
>
>
>
>
>
Take a look at his paintings:
Fifeshire Floozie
>>
>>>Craigie Aitchison: Painter renowned for his use of colour
>>>who refused to be tied down to a school or genre
>>
>> Which COULD BE why most people have never heard of him.
>
> Take a look at his paintings:
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2009/dec/22/craigie-aitchison-royal-academy?picture=357262011
Ah widnae gie ye tuppence fur thaim!
Ejaycee
"Fifeshire Floozie" <htr.@faeFife.com> wrote in message
news:7pnp28...@mid.individual.net...
Phew! I was holding back cos I thought it was me.....
I just dont understand where appreciation for this type of art comes from..
My grand kids can do better
Ejay>